One of the most frustrating parts of living in Japan, especially if you work in a Japanese office, is the fact that 125 million people take their vacations all at the same time. And short ones at that. If you are a foreigner, you may get away with asking for a long vacation at an [...]

According to government estimates, the population of Japan fell by approximately 75,000 in 2009, based on births and deaths registered in Japan between January and October. During 2009, there was a decrease in births, down 22,000 to 1,069,000 and an increase in deaths, up 2,000 to 1,144,000 compared with 2008. These both continued trends [...]

According to figures released in a recent government white paper, Mainichi reports, the law abiding spirit of the Japanese people appears to be in decline. Japan has long been proud of its record of relatively low violent crimes and high success rates of solving and prosecuting crimes. But recent figures suggest that [...]

The Japan Times has a poignant and heartbreaking article by an anonymous author, as he discusses his intensely personal trials as a foreign father in Japan whose wife has lost interest in their marriage. This article should be a must read for any man that is considering getting married or [...]

A recent Yomiuri survey showed that 7% fewer people were reading books compared with a year earlier. The survey asked respondents whether they had read a book in the past month, and 53% responded that they had not. This was almost as high as the mark of 54% in 2002.

Intuitively, it may be [...]

A Kyodo news report yesterday proclaimed that 1 in 7 Japanese people were living in poverty, according to a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare release. This was the first time that the ministry has released such figures, which were calculated in accordance with the calculation methods used [...]

The latest issue of the annual UN Human Development Index (HDI) from the UN Development Program shows Japan in 10th place in the world. This places it 3 places above the US, but 8 spots below my home country of Australia (see the top 15 ranked countries below). The [...]

I saw this post from Lee at Tokyo Times last night, and I just had to post a link to it here. The video below is from a Fuji News broadcast, so it is in Japanese with no subtitles, but it is very powerful nonetheless. It shows how unwanted [...]

I’ve been meaning to do a post about Financial and Postal Affairs Minister Kamei Shizuka ever since the election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until now. Kamei, and the leader of the DPJ’s other coalition partner, Fukushima Mizuho, pose something of a problem for the Hatoyama administration. He needed to find [...]

Although the government has made several attempts over the last decade or so to change conditions for temporary (or ‘dispatched’) workers, a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry study has found that about 41% of non-regular workers are doing work on a par with that of regular employees, although only 16% [...]